"If he's like you," she said, "then I'm not sorry."
"If he's like me," said Bean, "then it means Volescu really didn't have any kind of test. Or he had one, and discarded the babies that were normal. Or maybe they're all like me."
"The thing you wanted to avoid," she whispered.
"Our little miracles," said Bean.
"I hope you're not too disappointed. I hope you.... Think of it as a chance to see what your life might have been like if you had grown up with parents, in a home. Not barely escaping with your life and then scrabbling to survive on the streets of Rotterdam."
"At the age of one."
"Think what it will be like to raise this baby surrounded by love, teaching him as fast as he wants to learn. All those lost years, recovered for our baby."
Bean shook his head. "I hoped the baby would be normal," he said. "I hoped they'd all be normal. So I wouldn't have to consider this."
"Consider what?"
"Taking the baby with me."
"With you where?" asked Petra.
"The I.F. has a new starship. Very secret. A messenger ship. It uses a gravity field to offset acceleration. Up to lightspeed in a week. The plan is that once we find the babies, I take the ones like me and we take off and keep traveling until they find the cure for this."
"Once you're gone," said Petra, "why do you think the fleet will bother even looking for a cure?"
"Because they want to know how to turn Anton's Key without the side effects," said Bean. "They'll keep working on it."
Petra nodded. She was taking this better than Bean expecte
d.
"All right," she said. "As soon as we find the babies. Then we go."
"We?" said Bean.
"I'm sure, in your normal legumocentric view of the universe, it didn't cross your mind that there's no reason I shouldn't go along with you."
"Petra, it means being cut off from the human race. It's different for me because I'm not human."
"That again."
"What kind of life is that for the normal babies? Growing up confined to a starship?"
"It would only seem like weeks, Bean. How grown up will they be?"
"You'd be cut off from everything. Your family. Everybody."
"You stupid man," she said. "You are everybody now. You and our babies."
"You could raise the normal babies...normally. With grandparents. A normal life."
"A fatherless life. And their siblings off on a starship, so they'll never even meet. I don't think so, Bean. Do you think I'm going to give birth to this little boy and then let somebody take him away from me?"
Bean stroked her cheek, her hair. "Petra, there's a whole bunch of rational arguments against what you're saying, but you just gave birth to my son, and I'm not going to argue with you now."
"You're right," said Petra. "By all means, let's avoid this discussion until I've nursed the baby for the first time and it becomes even more impossible for me to consider letting you take him away from me. But I'll tell you this right now. I will never change my mind. And if you maneuver things so you sneak off and steal my son from me and leave me a widow without even my child to raise, then you're worse than Volescu. When he stole our children, we knew he was an amoral monster. But you--you're my husband. If you do that to me, I'll pray that God puts you in the deepest part of hell."
"Petra, you know I don't believe in hell."